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by Johnlocked221b



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depressing, Family, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, M/M, References to Depression, Sad Ending, You've been warned, this isn't happy at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johnlocked221b/pseuds/Johnlocked221b
Summary: Oswald attempts to reanimate a frozen Ed.(Please read the tags!)





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Silence.

 

The most deafening silence.

 

Oswald held the man in his arms. He was so cold. So stiff. And Oswald shivered as he waited.

 

He looked up at Victor, eyes watering. “How long now?”

 

“Any moment.”

 

Oswald sniffled and looked back down at the only man he’d ever loved.

 

And waited.

 

Edward’s eyes remained eerily still, white clinging to his lashes. Oswald almost felt as if he were holding a doll.

 

“Come back to me, Edward.” Oswald pleaded in a moment of weakness, a thumb caressing his cold, hard cheek.

 

Ed was still.

 

A crack split across his cheek, beneath Oswald’s thumb. He lifted it, heart pounding in his chest. The crack spread up and up and Oswald watched as Edward’s fingers crumbled from his hands.

 

“W-what…what’s happening?” Oswald panicked, looking up at Victor. “What’s wrong with him?”

 

Victor stepped back. “Oswald, I-“

 

Oswald looked back down at Ed, watching as he quite literally fell apart.

 

“I don’t understand.” Oswald’s voice came out as a squeak. “Victor!”

 

“Oswald, I’m so sorry, I-this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

 

“ _What_? What wasn’t supposed to happen? What’s happening? Why is he not waking up?” Oswald cried out. “Why is he breaking? Can you fix him?”

 

Ivy knelt beside Oswald, tears in her eyes as she placed a hand on his arm. She knew, there was no fixing this. “Oswald, he’s gone…I’m so sorry.”

 

“No!” He screeched. “No! You bring him back! You said that you could! You said you could bring him back! So do it! You have to!” His voice cracked at the end and his hands shook.

 

Every time he tried to hold Ed closer, he fell apart. Both of them fell apart.

 

Victor Fries stared down at him with his crystalline eyes. “The man at the GCPD was frozen only for a few hours before he was reanimated. It’s been three months. I didn’t realize…I thought my formula-“

 

Oswald crumpled in on himself, his head pressed against where Ed’s warm heart used to beat. He’d done this to him. It was his fault. Ed was gone and he’d taken Oswald with him.

 

Oswald suddenly pushed Ed’s body away and retched, the guilt manifesting itself physically.

 

For god’s sake, _he’d shown him off_. He’d _bragged_ about it. Who knows how long Ed was alive in there. Was he aware? When had he given up?

 

He must have been _terrified_.

 

Oswald retched again and Ivy rubbed his back, providing comfort the only way she knew how at the moment.

 

Victor sat down beside him. He knew this feeling well. The emptiness. Knowing the only person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with wasn’t in the world anymore. Having to live with the knowledge that he’d been the one to take her out of it.

 

It had left him a cold, numb shell of the man he used to be.

 

But where Victor had no one and nothing else to live for, Oswald had family. Ivy and Bridgit and himself. 

 

They’d get through this. They would.

 

They had to. For Nora. For _Edward_.

 

For each other.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fuuuuuck. I am so sorry about this one. I don't even know where it came from. Though I do think that, in reality, this is a very real risk. I don't know the science behind cryogenics and reanimation, but in my version, differences in body type and time in suspended animation have massive, and sometimes tragic, effects on the outcome of reanimation. Sorry bout it :(


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